4 Reasons Passion Can Drive Business Growth [ + 4 Examples]

Hiring for — and cultivating — passionate employees can drive repeatable, scalable business growth and protect your business against industry disruptions.

It's great when I hear people talk about our passion because I firmly believe that people do their best work when they love what they do.

According to research by Deloitte, up to '87.7 percent of America’s workforce is not able to contribute to their full potential because they don’t have passion for their work'. When these are the individuals on which your company's growth is dependent, the issue becomes striking.

'This “passion gap” is important because passionate workers are committed to continually achieving higher levels of performance', the report explains. 'In today’s rapidly changing business environment, companies need passionate workers because such workers can drive extreme and sustained performance improvement.'

The ability to access individuals enthusiastic about all areas of sales and marketing is one of the best reasons for working with an inbound marketing agency in the first place. In our field, success typically translates into improved campaign performance and revenue. Business growth isn't far behind.

As I explored this thought process, I found myself asking: while our passion gets noticed, how exactly does it make us work better?

From an inward look at the award-winning company we've built here to the ways our team's passion drives our clients' success, here are four examples of what I found.

1. Passion gives you purpose

I want to start by telling you about my passion. My passion is helping others to achieve their goals. I know that sounds cheesy, but I really mean it.

I'm involved with the Prince’s Trust (Prince Charles’ charity that helps young people get into jobs, training, or education). Working as a business mentor, I see first-hand the difference this support has made to the people who benefit from it.

This passion extends directly to our customers. In fact, helping others achieve their goals is one of the main reasons for founding BabelQuest with Eric. Our passion is to help businesses grow and communicate more effectively.

It's our purpose as a business, and its seen us grow from an office of two to globally recognised HubSpot Certified Diamond partner on a mission to help our clients succeed.

And ideally (or in my opinion essentially), in order to grow, you need people in your business that are passionate about what you do and deliver. They're clear what their purpose is and how this fits into the business.

2. Passion pushes you to learn and deliver more results

'I have no special talent', wrote Albert Einstein. 'I am only passionately curious.'

Einstein may have been underselling himself here, but his point stands. The most useful talent is a desire to learn. Most people have that desire, up to a point, but when the desire to learn is applied to something you're passionate about, the magic happens.

Case in point: Gem and Chris, our inbound strategist and sales enablement consultant respectively, both completed the full suite of HubSpot Certifications over the course of 2018, something that only a handful of HubSpot experts around the world have achieved. Meanwhile, Tom, our head of content, completed his PhD earlier this year looking at ways of overcoming the limitations of language to better communicate meaning across writing and storytelling. We think these examples speak volumes to both the passion our team members feel for their respective fields but also the benefits this learning brings to our clients' campaigns.

The more passion you have, the more you'll want to keep on learning and improving. Passion gives you that energy. And in my experience, it's those individuals who keep on down this path who tend to end up being successful at what they do.

Because we get a kick out of what we do and are constantly looking to the future, we're continually building our skills and looking ahead to where the inbound methodology is going next so that we can continue to help our clients grow.

3. Passion is infectious

Passion has a weird kind of semi-opposite: yawning. I say weird because, while they are pretty much opposites, both are incredibly catching. Watch someone yawn and the chances are that you’ll want to yawn too. Watch someone speak with passion and chances are you’ll be inspired in some way. CEO Chris Myers wrote for Forbes:

'We often forget that attitudes are contagious, particularly when it comes to business. If a leader surrounds themselves with bad influences, they run the risk of picking up bad behaviors. As leaders, the implications of this extend beyond just the personal; they spread throughout your entire organization.'

This was certainly true for one of our clients. Martin Jones at IT solutions provider LAN3. In his own words:

The reason LAN3 decided to work with BabelQuest was because of your passion, enthusiasm, and energy. We wanted to inject some of that into our business.

Our passion is also infectious when it comes to recruitment. When we interview job candidates we demonstrate our energy and show case our culture so that we end up recruiting people who want to feed off that energy. Our inbound strategist Gem decided to join us after recognising 'the enthusiasm from Eric and Becky and their genuine excitement about what they do. It's completely infectious'.

4. Passion makes work fun

This one is pretty simple: when you’re doing something you enjoy, it’s enjoyable! Watching your business grow is more than enjoyable; it’s awesome. And while that process obviously requires some very hard work, it's work that people are passionate about.

Our Instagram is chock-full of examples of the team having fun. Culture is a hugely important part of BabelQuest, and passion is one of five key pillars by which we uphold and celebrate that culture. We can't directly attribute the 'gram to our company's phenomenal growth this year, but since embracing it, the team has grown upwards (8 to 16 employees) and outwards (see the Great Babel Bakeoff!).

If people looked forward to coming to work, how much more productive and efficient do you think they could be? What could make their day more fun? It should be more than providing them with a table football in the canteen. It should be about the culture you create, a culture whereby people are passionate and care about what they do, which in turn will mean they have fun and don't dread their working week.

We're so passionate about inbound marketing's ability to drive tangible revenue growth that we wrote a book about it. Download your free copy of our 80-page ebook below and discover how you can use inbound marketing to drive business growth.